Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #3)(22)

Branna kept her hands busy, her voice calm. “People want all manner of things they can’t have.”

Sore spot, Iona reminded herself, and didn’t push on it. “What I mean is, it’s very possible the two of you were a little vulnerable last night, that your defenses or shields were lowered some. And that opened the door, so to speak, to that other power. Not Cabhan, because that absolutely makes no sense.”

“It hurt us.” And left a terrible aching behind. “He lives to hurt us.”

“Yes, but . . .” Iona shook her head. “He doesn’t understand us. He doesn’t understand love or loyalty or real sacrifice. Lust, sure. I don’t doubt he understands you and Fin are hot for each other, but he’d never understand what’s under it. Sorcha would.”

Branna stopped working on the candles, stared at Iona. “Sorcha.”

“Or her daughters. Think about it.”

“When I think about it, I’m reminded Sorcha’s the very one who cursed all that came from Cabhan, which would be Fin.”

“That’s true. She was wrong, but that’s true. And sure, maybe, considering he killed her husband, tore her from her own children, she’d do the same thing again. But she knew love. She understood it, she gave her power and her life for it. Don’t you think she’d use it if she could? Or that her children would?”

“So she, or they, cast the dreaming spell? Where we were together, and all defenses down, so we came together.”

She began to walk about, deliberately, running it over in her mind. “And when we did, used the power of that to send us back. But both too soon and too late.”

“Okay, think about that. Sooner, whatever happened in that cave might have pulled you in, beyond what you could fight. Later, you wouldn’t have spoken with the old man—potentially, and I think right again—Cabhan’s father.”

Iona got out the ribbon, the bottles as Branna worked in silence.

“I think you saw what you were meant to see, that’s what I’m saying. I think we need to find a way to see more—that’s the work. They can’t hand it to us, right? And I think—sore spot—it had to be only you and Fin together because the two of you need to resolve—not gloss over or bury or ignore—your feelings.”

“Mine are resolved.”

“Oh, Branna.”

“I can love him and be resolved to living without him. But I see now too much of it was hazed in my mind. All that feeling I couldn’t quite set down. You have good points here, Iona. We saw what we were meant to see, and we work from that.”

She glanced over, smiled before she poured more scented wax. “You’ve learned a great deal since the day you came to that door, in all that rain, in that pink coat, babbling away with your nerves.”

“Now if I could only learn to cook.”

“Ah well, some things are beyond our reach.”

She finished the candles, and together she and Iona made up the half dozen pretty gift sets. When her cousin set off to Cong, Branna took her solitude with tea by the fire, with Kathel’s head in her lap.

She studied the flames, let her thoughts circle. Then with a sigh, set her tea aside.

“All right then, all right.” She held her hands out to the fire. “Clear for me and let me see, through the smoke and into the fire, take me where the light desires.”

Images in the flames, voices through the smoke. Branna let herself drift toward them, let them pull her, surrendered to the call she’d felt in the blood, in the bone.

When they cleared, she stood in a room where another fire simmered, where candles flickered. Her cousin Brannaugh sat in a chair singing softly to the baby at her breast. She looked up, her face illuminated, and said, “Mother?”

“No.” Branna stepped out of the shadows. “No, I’m sorry.”

“I wished for her. I saw her when my son came into the world, saw her watching, felt her blessing. But only that, and she was gone. I wished for her.”

“I asked the light to take me where it willed. It brought me here.” Branna moved closer, looked down at the baby, at his down of dark hair, and soft cheeks, his dark, intense eyes as he suckled so busily at his mother’s breast.

“He’s beautiful. Your son.”

“Ruarc. He came so quick, and the light bloomed so bright with his birthing. I saw my mother in it even as Teagan guided him out of me and into the world. I thought not to see you again, not so soon.”

“How long for you?”

“Six days. We stay at Ashford, are welcome. I have not yet gone to the cabin, but both Teagan and Eamon have done so. Both have seen Cabhan.”

“You have not.”

“I hear him.” She looked toward the window as she rocked the baby. “He calls to me, as if I would answer. He called to my mother, now to me. And to you?”

“He has, will again, I imagine, but it will do him no good. Do you know of a cave, beyond the river?”

“There are caves in the hills, beneath the water.”

“One of power. A place of the dark.”

“We were not allowed beyond the river. Our mother, our father both forbade it. They never spoke of such a place, but some of the old ones, at gatherings, I heard them speak of Midor’s cave, and would make the sign against evil when they did.”